This Kalorama Information report, The Market for Urgent Care Clinics, defines the market opportunity for urgent care clinics and those companies that supply them. Urgent care centers (UCC's) provide a range of relatively routine medical care. This includes both basic care such as testing/screening and vaccination, as well as more advanced care such as the setting of broken bones. This Kalorama Information report, The Market for Urgent Care Clinics, defines the opportunity for urgent care center operators and provides the following market data:

Due to their greater convenience, UCC's offer some competition to primary care physicians. many patients report that their physicians do not offer extended office hours, which suggests a niche urgent care centers can fill.However, this is changing asUCC's may have influenced physicians to re-evaluate their competitiveness; in highly competitive markets, almost three out of four family doctors now offer same-day appointments, with nearly half have extended their office or weekend hours. More aggressive medical practices are also:

entering into relationships with urgent care centers and other clinics;

more actively participating in community events.

Although such service improvements benefit the public, history shows that competitors to established professions, particularly within the medical field, are often met with resistance from incumbents. Retail clinics, for example, have suffered from strong public statements questioning quality of care from the major medical associations; while UCC's, which are run and staffed by doctors, do not run this risk, they can and sometimes do experience other kinds of backlash including unwillingness of private practice physicians to collaborate and negative PR.

It should also be noted that while some medical practices are becoming more patient-centric, none are reducing service prices to position more competitively against UCC's. This is because the scope for cost cutting in most medical practices is limited, with high doctors' salaries, large fixed overhead costs and heavy expenses related to staff, billing and malpractice insurance.

The competitive landscape of the urgent care market is extremely dynamic, with a growing number of players and rapidly shifting positions. Companies profiled in the report include